The early edition of the Miami Herald confirmed what I’d known for hours: Alberto Cruz had been stabbed and killed in the alley behind Dirty Dave’s late the night before. It was a small item in the local section. There were no witnesses and, apparently, no one with any knowledge of the assault. The police asked anyone who knew anything about the murder to contact them, listing a number to call.
Kenny Alston, one of my contract investigators, was at Dirty Dave’s when it happened, and he’d called at three A.M. to tell me that Alberto had been jumped in the alley on his way home. Kenny had spent the evening in the bar, watching Alberto drink his usual quota of beers. After Alberto left the bar, swaying as usual, Kenny waited a few minutes before following him outside.
Kenny reported that there was nothing unusual in Alberto’s behavior that night. He assumed Alberto was going home from the bar, as always, so he gave Alberto time to walk away from the bar toward the apartment and piss in the alley, which was also part of his routine. It couldn’t have been more than three or four minutes after Alberto left the bar that Kenny followed. Alberto was nowhere to be seen. Kenny checked around and found Alberto slumped on the ground, hidden from view among the aluminum trash barrels behind the bar’s back door. Someone had obviously been waiting for him.
Kenny went back inside Dirty Dave’s and told the bartender to call an ambulance. Then he called the police and reported finding the body. Kenny didn’t volunteer any more information, and the police asked him hardly any questions at all. In that neighborhood, a stabbing was about as rare as a pinecone in the forest.
Now I was in my office, listening to the parrots laughing among themselves outside, and I was wrestling with my conscience. Alberto had the money for three days, and was killed two days after going to see Betancourt. It was too much of a coincidence, and I had to think through my responsibility as far as telling the police what I knew about the crime. Right now the police classified it as an attempted robbery, and as far as I knew, that might have been true.
I had lost my only link to Michelle’s mother, as well as the ten thousand dollars the Morenos had staked for Alberto. Since Alberto was a sailor, I guessed he hid it on the Mamita. And if he was dumb enough to blackmail Betancourt, the money probably was stashed with the photographs I left with him—and, maybe, the notebook Betancourt sought. If so, I wouldn’t be alone looking for them.
I knew the Miami police were inefficient investigators, especially for a low-priority victim such as Alberto Cruz, so I had some lead time. I doubted they had found the Mamita yet.
Alberto’s death left me with one, unattractive option: I had to find the big woman from the photos taken at Betancourt’s dock. Unfortunately, I had no idea whom she was. I meticulously laid out pictures of her in different poses from a set of enlargements I ordered, just trying to make something happen. The woman was obviously familiar with boats, so maybe I would find her around the Miami River, where Alberto kept the Mamita. If I couldn’t find her, I could pass the photos around the neighborhood. Maybe someone would identify her.
I again borrowed Leonardo’s Jeep for the expedition. I parked across the street from Alberto’s berth, under a banyan tree, and just watched the wooden sailboat for a while. It was suffocatingly hot, even with the windows down. I was glad I had dressed in shorts and a T-shirt, even though I got a few stares from the few lowlifes passing by on the street.
I must have said my prayers right the night before. Within a half hour a large, heavyset woman in baggy cotton pants and a print short-sleeved shirt slowly bicycled by my car. She passed the Mamita once, pedaled laboriously to the end of the block, waited a couple of minutes, then circled back.
She crossed the street right in front of me and tied her bicycle to a stunted, half-dead palm tree. She was wearing a big straw hat and sunglasses, but I was able to get a glimpse of her face. It was the woman in the photographs. With surprising agility for her girth, she jogged along the dock planks and jumped on board the sailboat. Now that I finally saw her a little better, I realized she wasn’t just overweight. I had seen women move their bodies like that before: she was pregnant.
I gave her ten minutes in the boat alone before I surprised her. Creeping onto the deck, I knelt and saw her through the porthole, frantically searching the main cabin, then moved closer. She had emptied an oversized drawer full of Alberto’s sea charts and turned it upside down, all the while puffing on a cigar.
She obviously knew where to look. She was about to pull back a slat from the shelf when I loudly cleared my throat. She instantly jumped three feet in the air, grabbed a machete leaning against the wall next to her, and pulled the thick cigar out of her mouth.
“Who are you? What are you doing here?” she spat, brandishing the machete threateningly above her head.
I ignored her questions. “Are you looking for these?”
I held up a couple of Miranda’s photographs featuring her, Alberto, and Betancourt. The woman sprang at me and tried to grab them from my hand. I let her—after all, she had the machete. There were plenty more copies back at the office.
She glared at me with intense confusion, hatred, and fear. She was a mulatto with beautiful light brown skin and almond, almost Asian black eyes. Her hair was loosely braided down her back, falling nearly down to her waist. Even when she wasn’t pregnant, I guessed, she must have been huge.
“I know who you are,” she said, her eyes locking on mine. She gripped the machete tighter. “You’re the one who came to see Alberto about the mother of that baby. He told me you gave him some money.”
“I did give him some money, but he never told me where to find the mother. He was going to, but he passed away.” She put the machete on the table and closed her eyes. “But I could always do the deal with you instead,” I went on. “I know you were there. You always went with Alberto to get the babies.”
The woman’s eyes narrowed, and I could see she knew I was bluffing. “Alberto didn’t pass away, he was killed,” she said. “He got stabbed because he was going to tell you about the babies. He said you threatened him, that you made him tell you about the trips.”
“And did he tell you he went to Betancourt and tried to blackmail him?”
The woman moved for the machete but apparently thought better of it. Instead she took a particularly furious drag on her cigar. I tried not to think about what she was doing to the baby inside her.
She sat there studying me, as though I would take back what I had just said or burst loose with answers. I wasn’t moving either, but I was doing some mental arithmetic, trying to figure which of us could get to the machete quicker if things turned sour. I had the Beretta in my purse, but I couldn’t count on getting it out before she cut in. Pregnant or not, she was agile.
“Why the hell should I believe you?” she said, still staring. “Alberto would never go to the lawyer like that. He hated the hijo de puta, but he was scared of him too. You’re a liar.”
She adjusted herself, trying to get her belly comfortable. “I’m not lying,” I said. “I had Alberto followed from the day I went to his apartment. I suspected he might try something.”
She exhaled an enormous cloud of smoke directly into my face. If I hadn’t been Cuban, growing up with Papi and my uncles smoking around me all my life, I might have vomited on the spot. I swallowed hard. This wasn’t someone you wanted to throw up in front of. I couldn’t see her kindly giving me a Wash’n Dri afterward to clean my face.
“Why should I believe you?” she asked, apparently disappointed she couldn’t turn my stomach. “I’ve known Alberto for years. You’re just some skinny bitch who wants something out of me.”
I reached into the envelope containing Nestor’s photographs and pulled three from the bottom of the stack. I slid them over to her and waited for her reaction.
“You see, I’m telling the truth,” I said gently. “Alberto went to Betancourt’s office to blackmail him. It didn’t work. Now he’s dead, and you’re in big trouble. Betancourt will come after you next.”
She shook her head as though talking to a confused child. “Why would he come after me? Alberto went there alone, and I’m not going to blackmail the lawyer. Betancourt has nothing to fear from me.”
I was making progress. Maybe she’d always suspected she couldn’t completely trust Alberto. Thank God for Nestor and his camerawork.
“You’re in deep shit,” I insisted. “I can tell you’re a smart woman, so don’t play dumb. Betancourt might think you’ll step in where Alberto left off, and you’re the only link left between him and the babies. You yourself told me Alberto was afraid of him.”
The boat began to sway in the wake of a speedboat passing by in the marina outside. I reached out for the bulkhead until the waves subsided.
“Betancourt is a bad man,” she said, ignoring the boat’s rocking. “But he wouldn’t come after me unless he was sure I was up to something.” For the first time I thought I detected a slight doubt in her voice. She puffed some more on the cigar.
I took a deep breath. It was time to get personal. “What’s your name, anyway?” I asked.
This woman gave away nothing easily. Her lips tight, she said. “Barbara. Barbara Perez.”
“Look, Barbara, you know the kind of trouble you’re in. You’ve known Betancourt for years.” A guess, but she didn’t deny it. “Do you think this man cares about right and wrong? The man traffics in babies.”
Barbara’s face turned red. “You’re the one that got Alberto killed!” she yelled. “If you hadn’t gone to see him, he’d be alive today and I wouldn’t be in all this trouble!”
“Let’s get one thing straight. Alberto got Alberto killed.” I slapped the table. “He tried to blackmail Betancourt. I’m not going to take the blame because he was stupid.” Barbara shrugged as though what I said was true. “You lie down with dogs, you get fleas. Right?”
She chuckled softly. “You know so much, girl detective. Tell me, then. What happens next?”
That took me by surprise. Barbara was tough, but she had started to accept me. We weren’t going to be best friends, but at least she wasn’t eyeing the machete every few seconds. Finally, she was listening.
“First of all, I need to know about the mother of that baby you picked up four years ago. I’ll make the same deal with you that I made with Alberto. He told you the details, right?”
Barbara rubbed her belly, almost reflexively. She was in trouble, as far as I could guess, but I was partially bluffing and she seemed to know it. “What good is money to me when I’m dead?” she asked. “Look at Alberto. He doesn’t care about money now.”
“But Alberto tried to blackmail Betancourt. Alberto got greedy,” I reminded her. “You could leave Miami.”
Her eyes widened; like me, she was Cuban. I could see leaving Miami wasn’t something she had ever considered. “You’re going to have a baby in a few months, right? Give me the information I want, and you can start fresh someplace new.”
Barbara sat quietly, brooding over her limited options. At first she had frightened me, with her sudden violence and the menace in her eyes, but I could see now that she was more scared of me than I was of her. I let her take her time. She was Michelle Moreno’s only hope, and I seemed to have done nothing but screw up all the others.
Seeing that Barbara was going to take a while, I looked around the sailboat for the first time. She made no move to stop me.
The place was the polar opposite of Alberto’s purple apartment. This was a man’s domain, all dark colors and wood paneling. It was a boat designed for serious sailors, with no frills, just the bare necessities for life at sea. The only sign of Alberto was the beautiful, meticulously polished wood—and a lingering smell of Gauloises.
“I’ll help you,” Barbara said from behind me, and I realized I had forgotten myself and turned my back on her. “But you have to guarantee that Betancourt won’t hurt me. I don’t want to leave Miami. I have six children—seven with this one.” She patted her belly. “Guarantee me that lawyer will leave me alone, and I’ll tell you about the little girl’s mother.”
“How do you expect me to guarantee that? I don’t know what the man is going to do!” I started to get angry, then remembered Barbara could beat me senseless in under a minute if she wanted to. “Look, I’ll more than double the money. I’ll pay you twenty-five thousand dollars.”
She stared into my eyes. “You have to guarantee my safety as well. I don’t care how you do it, but those are my terms.”
Well, this was a kink I didn’t expect. I sympathized with her, but how could I guarantee how Betancourt might act, especially now that it seemed obvious he was willing to play hardball? He probably hadn’t killed Alberto himself—men like him seldom did their own dirty work—but I was growing certain that he was responsible. With his client list, he could have opened an employment agency for killers and thugs.
I left Barbara sitting in the captain’s chair, her arms resolutely crossed over her ample chest. I really didn’t blame her for dictating outrageous terms. Unfortunately, now each of us bore the fate of another in our hands.